Clinicopathologic Comparison of High-Dose-Rate Endorectal Brachytherapy versus Conventional Chemoradiotherapy in the Neoadjuvant Setting for Resectable Stages II and III Low Rectal Cancer

Table 4

Pathologic outcomes broken down by EBT, 3DRT, and IMRT groups with statistical comparison. EBT: endorectal brachytherapy; 3DRT: 3D conformal radiotherapy; IMRT: intensity-modulated radiotherapy; RT: radiotherapy; CR: complete response; LN: lymph nodes.

Pathologic outcome	ERBT (𝑛=7)	3DRT (𝑛=14)	IMRT (𝑛=11)	𝑃
No. with pathologic CR of primary tumor at surgery (%)	3 (43)	1 (7)	2 (18)	0.06
No. with positive margins at surgery (%)	0 (0)	1 (7)	0 (0)	0.47
No. with LN involvement at surgery (%)	3 (43)	8 (57)	4 (36)	0.57
No. with lymphovascular invasion (%)	1 (14)	1 (7)	2 (18)	0.60